[CLOSED] RFCPool.com

[eleuthria]

Closing down the pool (yes, again).

Two main reasons:
a) I believe bitcoin is dying a slow protracted death, with falling hashrates and falling values it's only a matter of time before it's gone entirely.
b) we had server issues which led to the outage earlier on today, but believed them to be fixed - sadly not and we're now at a state where the pool server won't boot properly, and given my position on a) I'm not willing to invest any more time in fixing this and carrying on running it just to have it all for nothing in what I suspect may be a matter of weeks.

There was one block which hadn't confirmed yet, once it has I'll get it paid out. All remaining balances will be paid out.

It ain't coming back this time, thanks for the hashes over the past few months.

While I understand your position, if you're basing this decision on "bitcoin is dying" I'd recommend you reconsider.  Bitcoin is returning back to a reasonable value, and the latest difficulty adjustments show that.  Difficulty will -always- lag behind the price curve, since it's calculated reactively to the changes over the last 2 weeks, rather than as a prediction.

Every pool op has felt the pressure as the prices shrink, the problems rise, and the difficulty seems too slow at catching up to a reasonable level.  Obviously at these prices/difficulty, 0% is basically impossible.  Over the next few months you will likely see the majority of free pools either close, or change to fee structures.  Perhaps you should try implementing a fee and trying to keep your presence known?  If you play your cards right, who knows what position you'd be in if we see another bubble 6 months down the road?

[farfiman]

While I understand your position, if you're basing this decision on "bitcoin is dying" I'd recommend you reconsider.  Bitcoin is returning back to a reasonable value, and the latest difficulty adjustments show that.  Difficulty will -always- lag behind the price curve, since it's calculated reactively to the changes over the last 2 weeks, rather than as a prediction.

Every pool op has felt the pressure as the prices shrink, the problems rise, and the difficulty seems too slow at catching up to a reasonable level.  Obviously at these prices/difficulty, 0% is basically impossible.  Over the next few months you will likely see the majority of free pools either close, or change to fee structures.  Perhaps you should try implementing a fee and trying to keep your presence known?  If you play your cards right, who knows what position you'd be in if we see another bubble 6 months down the road?

Nice to see that the "competition"  would like the pool to continue.

Although the op has stated  "It ain't coming back this time, thanks for the hashes over the past few months"
maybe these words can help convince him. ( yeah  , wishful thinking)

[eleuthria]

While I understand your position, if you're basing this decision on "bitcoin is dying" I'd recommend you reconsider.  Bitcoin is returning back to a reasonable value, and the latest difficulty adjustments show that.  Difficulty will -always- lag behind the price curve, since it's calculated reactively to the changes over the last 2 weeks, rather than as a prediction.

Every pool op has felt the pressure as the prices shrink, the problems rise, and the difficulty seems too slow at catching up to a reasonable level.  Obviously at these prices/difficulty, 0% is basically impossible.  Over the next few months you will likely see the majority of free pools either close, or change to fee structures.  Perhaps you should try implementing a fee and trying to keep your presence known?  If you play your cards right, who knows what position you'd be in if we see another bubble 6 months down the road?

Nice to see that the "competition"  would like the pool to continue.

Although the op has stated  "It ain't coming back this time, thanks for the hashes over the past few months"
maybe these words can help convince him. ( yeah  , wishful thinking)

I'm just worried about seeing a large number of small pool operators throw in the towel.  The big problem is most of these pools started during in the middle or height of the bubble.  There were only3 pools around when I started, but prices were trending up/difficulty was low, so 0% with donations was a very profitable setup and a good draw.  A few months later MANY new pools opened up, and by then it was basically impossible to obtain miners without being 0%.  Now that the bubble popped, it's scary as a pool operator to try to figure out how to pay your server bills when the old economic model doesn't work anymore.

The last thing Bitcoin needs right now are a bunch of pools closing down, forcing all the hash power to be consolidated into a small number of pools.

[Inaba]

Well, eclipsemc.com is in it for the long haul and has DGM + merged mining.  I started the pool about a month after Eleuthria I think... so I won't say EMC has been around from the start, but closer than most. We are also 0% fee and plan to keep it that way.

[rennex]

Over the next few months you will likely see the majority of free pools either close, or change to fee structures.  Perhaps you should try implementing a fee and trying to keep your presence known?  If you play your cards right, who knows what position you'd be in if we see another bubble 6 months down the road?

The fact is that be it fees or donations, at the 60 GH/s that we seemed to have reached (or the <50 it was more recently), it doesn't amount to much. If Bitcoins were worth more, or if we had had more hashrate (say, finding a couple of blocks daily), it might have been worth the effort to keep going. But as things were, with Bitcoin value in the mud and the pool not really growing, it was looking improbable that the pool could ever even cover the server costs. It was an interesting project to develop, but in the end that wasn't enough.

[Graet]

We started about the same time as ARS and RFC and plan on sticking around, there is much more to BTC imo than its apparent "value", quite a few pools have come and gone (some come and gone, resurrected then gone)

I respect Caesium as  a poolop and a person, I am dissapointed by his decision (we all must decide what is best for ourselves tho) and wish him well in his future endeavors

[farfiman]

The fact is that be it fees or donations, at the 60 GH/s that we seemed to have reached (or the <50 it was more recently), it doesn't amount to much. If Bitcoins were worth more, or if we had had more hashrate (say, finding a couple of blocks daily), it might have been worth the effort to keep going. But as things were, with Bitcoin value in the mud and the pool not really growing, it was looking improbable that the pool could ever even cover the server costs. It was an interesting project to develop, but in the end that wasn't enough.

Actually there was no mention of it being an economic problem, but the feeling that BTC is dead and not worth the trouble anymore. 

[Jezzz]

Guess I'll remove the dead link from my sig. 

[haploid23]

aww bummers, i finally noticed this . i think i still had a balance of a few BTC in the pool, were those ever paid out before the close?

[Valalvax]

aww bummers, i finally noticed this . i think i still had a balance of a few BTC in the pool, were those ever paid out before the close?

They were working on payments last night, not sure if they finished or not, but it'll get done

[Pontius]

There was one block which hadn't confirmed yet, once it has I'll get it paid out. All remaining balances will be paid out.

Any news on this? Confirmation should be done for at least two days now...

[Caesium]

Yes, sorry, it has just been done.

Apologies for the delay, I didn't want to rush it and get it wrong - transaction id is f89de013f710f07b89e09901ed86815ebe8f115c50579fda5d2d370af06779dd

Emails were sent out if you had email confirmations on.

[Aexoden]

Yes, sorry, it has just been done.

Apologies for the delay, I didn't want to rush it and get it wrong - transaction id is f89de013f710f07b89e09901ed86815ebe8f115c50579fda5d2d370af06779dd

Emails were sent out if you had email confirmations on.

Confirming that I received my final payment. Thanks for putting forth the effort to close the pool fairly and get unpaid rewards out to as many people as possible. From the IRC logs, it seems like it was more work than ideal.

[iongchun]

Yes, sorry, it has just been done.

Apologies for the delay, I didn't want to rush it and get it wrong - transaction id is f89de013f710f07b89e09901ed86815ebe8f115c50579fda5d2d370af06779dd

Emails were sent out if you had email confirmations on.

Thanks for the final payout. I will miss the good days with RFCPool.

[Pontius]

Yes, I can also confirm. Thank you very much for the final payout and for the great service while running the pool!
Caesium, I send you a PM a few days ago and would realy appreciate a (very basic) answer.

[Caesium]

PM sent, probably longer than you wanted :p